Google Chrome update promises faster loading on slow connections

Google Chrome update promises faster loading on slow connections

Google Chrome users can now expect a more seamless mobile experience following the browser’s latest updates, which have been based on user feedback.

“In Indonesia and India, people use mobile devices in a different way to those living in the US. They’re particularly concerned about data usage and thus frequently turn it on and off,” Google Chrome product management director Rahul Roy-chowdhury told a press conference on Wednesday.

Chrome’s new features reportedly included faster webpage loading and push notifications even over poor internet connections.

Roy-chowdhury added that users in both India and Indonesia were in fact cutting-edge in terms of mobile devices, which sometimes serve as their sole gadget for accessing the internet.

“Many of the [changes] that were inspired by users in Indonesia and India have started to be applied elsewhere,” he said.

Google has also optimized its “smart image replacement”, which will cut out some images on the web that are not important for navigation; a feature that is said to conserve data usage by up to 70 percent. Google even claimed it could save users about 2GB per month.

“Many web designers don’t care about data usage. Take a fast food website, for example. They put a burger image for navigation, but an additional image needs additional data. By cutting these images, we can save data usage [for users],” said Roy-chowdhury.

Separately, due to a security update, Google will no longer support older operating systems.

“For operating systems like Windows XP, Microsoft doesn’t provide security updates anymore, so we have difficulty implementing our update. However, the old version of Chrome will still work,” he added.